Rejected Openings for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

One morning, when Harry Potter woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single wizard in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wand.

The sky above Privet Drive was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

Stately, plump Neville Longbottom came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him on the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned: Wingardium leviosa!

To Severus Snape she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Lily Potter. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind … and yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Lily Potter, of dubious and questionable memory.

There once was a boy named Dudley Dursley, and he almost deserved it.

Dumbledore was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Harry Potter signed it: and Potter’s name was good upon Diagon Alley, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Dumbledore was as dead as a door-nail.

Once upon a time there were four little wizards, and their names were Neville, Ron, Hermione, and Harry.

You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of “Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone;” but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Ms. J. K. Rowling, and she told the truth, mainly. There was things which she stretched, but mainly she told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Petunia, or Professor Dumbledore, or maybe Hermione. Aunt Petunia – my Aunt Petunia, she is – and Hermione, and Professor Dumbledore is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.

When Mr. Harry Potter of Privet Drive announced that he would shortly be celebrating his seventeenth birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk in Hogwarts.

In a cupboard under the stairs there lived a wizard. Not a nasty, dirty, dark cupboard, filled with threadbare sheets and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, cramped cupboard with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a wizard’s cupboard, and that means comfort.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wizardry, it was the age of Muggles, it was the epoch of Dumbledore, it was the epoch of Voldemort, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Hogwarts, we were all going direct to Azkaban –in short, the period was so far like the present period, that the Daily Prophet insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Hermione Grainger was not beautiful but young wizards seldom realized it when caught by her brilliance as Ron Weasley was.

5 comments on “Rejected Openings for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”

That was perhaps the stupidest thing I have ever read. The person who wrote this does not know how to write at all. Although I do think the story line behind it was somewhat good such as that Harry Potter is real and JKR was writing about it and it wasn’t from her imagination but a real thing that happened. I myself have caught myself thinking the same thing. What if Harry Potter is real and JKR found out and wrote a book? Wouldn’t we all just love to think so. To think that there is such a magic in this world makes all the bad go away and that is why I have become the Potter fan that I am today.

Catelynn,
You are obviously not very bright or well-read, so I’ll say this slowly: everything in this list is a parody of the opening line of a great work of literature. J.K. only WISHES she could write with the caliber that these authors penned their masterpieces.
You are a small, yapping creature who probably deserve the ignorant fate she gets.

I like these! How about “It was the day my aunt Marge inflated.” (The Crow Road by Iain Banks)
Or how about this– “In a cupboard under the stairs there lived a wizard. Not a nasty, dirty, wet cupboard, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy cupboard with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a the Dursley’s cupboard, and that means even worse.” (The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien; just had to add it because I saw the Fellowship of the Ring one there.)